As someone who works with door hardware, this would be a pretty easy interview.

I’m not saying to get overly bright lights. I have no idea why you keep talking about overly bright lights. When I’m not driving for work, I drive a '94 corolla with stock headlights. But even with those, I can see dark obstacles that are way ahead of me on the road. I’ve encountered deer, turtles, pedestrians, and all sorts of random stuff that fell off of people’s cars. There’s so much on the road that needs to be illuminated, even if all the other cars have working lights. The fact that you can so nonchalantly bring up a scenario in which you can’t even see another car, much less all the other stuff that might show up on the roads, makes me highly concerned for the state of your vehicle. That scenario is so insanely rare and dangerous that I can’t understand how you can just throw it out there like it’s no big deal.

It’s NOT NORMAL to be unable to see a car on the road that’s close enough to you where you need to see where their blinker are. Please, if you drive in that scenario often enough to bring it up like it’s a realistic thing that someone could reasonably encounter more than once in a lifetime, bring your car to a mechanic before you cause a huge accident.

You’re absolutely right that circumstances aren’t always perfect… Which is exactly why you need a vehicle that can maximize safety in all situations. A union jack blinker is dumb, but if you’re EVER in a situation where you can’t tell what side of a car a blinker is going off on, you’re in a situation where you need to pull off to the side of the road, turn off your car, and call for someone to pick you up.

I’ve driven for tens of thousands of hours in my lifetime so far, and I’ve never even been close to a situation like what you’ve described. Even in a snow squall or dense fog I’ve always been able to see where other nearby cars on the road are, and where their blinkers are. Not being able to do so goes well beyond “not ideal;” that’s well past the line of too dangerous. And the fact that THAT is how extreme your scenario has to get before the union jack becomes a considerable issue shows how much more concerning your scenario is than that one.

You think that headlights that can illuminate cars ahead of you are the equivalent to those shitty aftermarket LED floodlights? Really? If your car can’t see a dark car on the road with its lights off, you’re a much, MUCH bigger idiot than someone with a union jack blinker…

Dude, if your headlights aren’t enough to illuminate what’s in front of you, then it’s not that an upgrade would be too much, it’s that an upgrade would get you to the bare minimum… You literally NEED to be able to see what else is on the road with you at ALL TIMES. You’re complaining about the risk that a vaguely arrow-shaped blinker causes in the specific case where you literally can’t see the car it’s attached to. There’s a much bigger risk there, and while it’s not your fault, it’s definitely something your vehicle needs to have the tools to deal with.

There have been times where I was driving near someone who forgot to turn their headlights on at night. But that’s the thing - I knew they were there; I could see their car with the light from my headlights, and even in that dangerously-low vision, I could easy tell which side of their car a blinker came on from. Yes, I got off the road and waited a bit to make sure they weren’t near me anymore, but even in the time that I had to drive with them, I had the tools to resolve the situation safely for me.

If you’re driving in the dark with someone whose entire taillight system is out to the point where you can’t immediately tell if his blinker is on the left or the right, you need to hit the brakes and put as much distance between you and them as you can… Then get better headlights, because even in that situation you should still be able to see them pretty well just with your own lights.

Yeah, I could see it being an issue for some less-common type of indicator, but everyone who drives knows what a blinker looks like. Nobody would mistake it for anything other than the right hand turn signal.

Hell, I wouldn’t even notice the shape of the light; all you need to notice while driving is the presence of a flashing light on the right side of the vehicle - if you’re looking intently enough to notice the shape of the light, you’re not paying enough attention to everything else on the road.

It’s the year 1.7×10¹⁰⁶. The heat death of the universe is imminent. Still listening to this banger. Modern music sucks - I was born in the wrong generation. Like if you agree.

I never said anything about Elon being directly responsible for this, nor did anyone else within the replies to the conspiracy theory comment that I was referring to. The fact of the matter is that conspiracy theorists touted Elon’s acquisition of Twitter as being the return of free speech, but immediately after the death of Putin’s largest opposition figure, who’s wife said that she would carry his torch, she’s removed from the platform. Whether due to Elon or anyone else, Twitter is not a platform of free speech, and that should outrage anyone, whether they Like Elon or not, and whether they agree with Navalny and his wife or not.

Believe me, it got sadder and sadder watching it happen in person, too.

Conspiracy theorists are people who believe wild, baseless information, whose only sources are other people who believe wild, baseless information. My mom thinks that the US is owned by some guy in Montana because she saw a youtube video that said so. She believes that any time someone spells her name in all caps they’re literally trying to enslave her. She believes that Donald Trump is literally the second coming of Jesus Christ, and that Elon Musk is one of his new disciples because he allowed him back onto Twitter. She believes that sitting in a chair that vibrates at a specific frequency is more likely to cure her stage 4 breast cancer than an oncologist. My mom is a conspiracy theorist, and she’ll be dead soon from cancer that she found while it was still easily treatable with surgery, but decided then that oregano oil would be a more effective treatment.

Nobody’s ever heard of it; I’ve been singing its praises since 2006, and I’ve never met another person in real life who’s heard of it. It’s an amazing game set in a slightly-steampunk world where cars have only recently been invented, but giant steam-powered mechs were invented around the same time as well. The story’s interesting, but the real fun comes from how much freedom the game gives in how you want to play it:

You can customize your character’s clothes, you can be a good guy, you can be a jerk who charges his friends for every little favor, you can just straight-up be a villain, you can hustle pool, you can play in a band with a bunch of different instruments, each with their own mini game associated with playing them, you can extort or save an orphanage, you can buy and decorate an apartment, then play a dating sim with some of the characters, and that’s all before you factor in the giant mech, which you can customize with a bunch of different pieces and use to fight in a colosseum, explore ruins for treasure, excavate fossils to save a museum, fight giant bosses, transport goods and passengers, and even turn it into an airplane to fly around in.

And that’s all in a PS2 game! Sure, all of the features are limited by both the hardware and the inclusion of so many other features, but they’re all fun, and the graphics look great. I rarely play any game more than once, and I’ve played this game well over a dozen times. It’s helped by the different endings depending on how you play your character, but even the parts that are the same between playthroughs are still fun every time. It’s my favorite game of all time by a huge margin.

Best game of all time. I play it every year.

Huh, you’re right. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a piece of mail without it - I just figured it was necessary.

Ah, I didn’t realize return addresses weren’t mandatory in other parts of the world. I figured you just put yours elsewhere from ours on your letters when I saw the space where we usually have ours was blank. That certainly makes it difficult to resolve missent mail. I admire your ability to put a positive spin on the scenario, haha! I’m sure the senders are happier just continuing to believe their letters are being accepted and enjoyed.

I had this issue with my last address, so when I moved to my current house and started seeing mail for the previous owner as well as what I assume to be the owner before him, I immediately wrote 'No longer at this address, return to sender" on all mail that wasn’t for me - even spam mail - and made a support ticket on the USPS website. I felt like it was a bit overkill, but I did stop seeing mail for other people pretty quickly.

Dunno how quick Royal Mail would be comparatively, but maybe they’d be just as effective as USPS was for me.

The Best Ways to Stand Up to your Bully

1. Just give him your lunch money. It is one of the easiest ways to stand up to your bully.

Nah, noise in general is annoying when I’m trying to work. I like listening to music, but I’d be annoyingly distracted if a radio was on in the office.

I’m in the middle of getting inspections for selling my house and thought I had some appointment I forgot about, haha!

Welp, this is the thing that got me to get rid of my lemmy.world account and move to lemm.ee. There were other issues I was able to overlook, but I need a community willing to stand up to laws that go against the interests of the people.